I want to apologise for the fact that we haven't been able to get multiplayer leagues into Frozen Cortex.

It was a feature that was planned early on in development and went through a number of iterations, but we really struggled to get it right and eventually weren't able to complete it for release.

Since then, game hasn't performed well enough for us to do significant further development on it, however despite that we've been working on something which we hope will respond to what we feel were shortfalls with the single player game. It's a free update which will be out very soon and it'll add a lot more depth to the simulation there - there will also be a number of significant bug fixes and requested features, such as an ability to skip the 3D outcomes and view everything in the planning mode. We felt that all of those things were the most pressing needs in terms of improving Cortex.

We need to be more conservative with planned features that we announce in future, so we'll do our best to stop something like this happening again. I know it's extremely frustrating when a feature you wanted and were expecting gets cut: I'm annoyed that this happened. We will continue to do our best to both get the spec of games right in advance and execute the spec that we announce fully.

Awfully disappointing. I think MP leagues would've been just the kind of thing that helps build community and keep it active. Single player just doesn't do that to most people. I might not be the average player, but I've played 700+ hours of Frozen Synapse, but haven't finished the campaign. I've also played 250+ hours of Frozen Cortex, and maybe 5-10 single player leagues. That's what, 1:100 ratio between SP and MP?

Currently I log in every now and then and start one or two matches, play them a bit and do the same a few of days later to catch with unplayed matches and maybe start a new one. With leagues I'm pretty sure I'd play more (both in leagues and outside of them), as I did with Frozen Synapse back when Meneth used to run a league. Running one myself without the in-game support would take too much time, so that's out of the question.

To be honest, this makes me a lot less interested in Frozen Cortex overall. I suppose I'll play normal multiplayer matches once in a blue moon and possibly try the manager update for one season when it's out, if it seems interesting enough. Oh well, maybe this is a good time to finally get Cities: Skylines and immerse myself in that.

That is sad to hear. I really feel that multiplayer games is what keeps the fanbase alive and kicking and MP Leagues done right could have been a major improvement to a ,let's be honest really lacking, mp system of synapse. I am modrately excited about the manager update but playing against the AI in any league would never compare to a league of real opponents in my books. Same as Neofelis in the post above, I might be slowly drifting away from Cortex without the opportunity to compete with the best-of-the-best on a regular basis in a competitive league environment.

I think what the game actually needs in order for people to play it and be excited about it is a way to match make when offline. Matchmaking only online players is great when you have 20-30 people online all the time to play. We don't have that, and we won't have that until there's a reason to be on. Tournaments or leagues were supposed to be the way to implement that, build a community, and reach the sales you needed to pay for it. Before you wrecked the beta and didn't fix it for months, we had a pretty large turnout for a tournament. After that, I don't think you ever really recovered. The core people left, and while we came back when you fixed it, it was staggered and there was no-one to play. Now you have Steffan to thank for starting up a Steam group and running a tournament. But it only got 8 people and despite putting videos out there, I doubt I'll find people to play with. Despite that, I love the single-player mode.

Once again, Mode7 shoots itself in the foot over promising tournaments and failing to deliver, and thinking that the problem is the game and not the problem is their lack of delivering KEY features. Not 'hey this would be a great extra' features, KEY features. All you needed to implement was a win/loss tracker within league games and a way to create games through the league system. Maybe that was too hard, but I'm guessing it had more to do with wanting to do a lot with it that nobody actually cared about, but would have been 'nice'. Storylines. Players moving teams. The money system. Etc. But really what people wanted was to be able to sign up for games when other people weren't on and know they were going to get played, and they would count in a grander scheme of things.

Jythier wrote:I think what the game actually needs in order for people to play it and be excited about it is a way to match make when offline.

This really seems to be the minimum requirement. Some sort of open challenge system similar to the FS system. Just a list of game modes you'd accept and perhaps a number of matches you'd be willing to start at once (maybe only one against any single opponent so they all wouldn't get taken by one player's spam). It should probably show level/record for the players and maybe have limits for them, so people who prefer playing against similar experience levels can do that.

I started playing again in Steffan's league and have started a couple of other matches while playing them, but other than that I don't feel like idling around waiting for matches or challenging people who happen to be online - they might be playing singleplayer with no intention of even trying multiplayer, let alone against someone who has played hundreds of matches.

Jythier wrote:Matchmaking only online players is great when you have 20-30 people online all the time to play. We don't have that, and we won't have that until there's a reason to be on. Tournaments or leagues were supposed to be the way to implement that, build a community, and reach the sales you needed to pay for it.

I'd have to echo that--it feels awful to me to log in, notice that I don't have any active turns, go to look at the roster of people around on the multiplayer tab just so I can get a turn or a game in . . . (sound of crickets) . . . oh, two people finished up a game four hours ago.

Jythier wrote:Now you have Steffan to thank for starting up a Steam group and running a tournament. But it only got 8 people and despite putting videos out there, I doubt I'll find people to play with.

So I'm the fourth person in a row on this thread from Steffan's FCN league. As Jythier will attest, out of the 8 of us, at least 4 (half the league!) have put significant work in to being an informal "league office". As in, being the schedulers, statisticians, announcers, league communications . . . it's a lot of leg work for an 8 team league, and it's time and energy that could have been better spent on playing league matches. In fact, that time and energy spent was at least part of what reduced the schedule to its current form. I'm not going to speak for everyone who contributed like that, but I'd say each of us did it to have a proper league that we'd all enjoy--in the hope that everyone, once the league wrapped up, could say, "Dang, that was fun, let's run that again." But who's to say we're lucky enough to get 8 people again, and lucky enough to have 4-8 people with the will to finish it?

Would I get on board for another season? Dang right I would. But that's knowing what it's going to take, knowing that I'll chip in again. I can't say that for everyone else. That's the part that's hard to accept--there ARE people out there willing to play, but the people left in the community, maybe not now, but at some point, are going to get tired of having to do it all on their own.